Please Proceed to the Next Test Chamber: The Importance of Affordances and Semiotics in the Interpretation of Game Space is a research paper investigating how players experience video game worlds.

I have always been interested in applying abstract concepts from various fields of study to video games. By looking outside the established body of ludic and narrative based game research, we can gain unique insights into what makes games tick. Semiotics is primarily a linguistic field, but is also applied to various forms of media while helping describe the reality we construct for ourselves. This is perfect for video games, which usually concern themselves with transporting their player into another, equally made up world. Pairing semiotics with affordances seemed like a natural step to take. Affordances describe the way we interact with things – be it space or objects. If we’re constructing a reality, it makes sense to study how we interact with it.

Writing this paper has helped me learn more about game design than I had imagined, even the simplest interactions depend on a lifetime of learned associations, expectations and unconscious connections. I hope this research can shed some light on why something feels intuitive, and how we go about creating our new worlds for players to experience.

This research piece analyzes a wide variety of games through these lenses, and provides the reader with an interactive space to explore these ideas themselves. Presented as a magazine-style eBook, the written component is a companion piece to the playable game.